Dorothy Parker

On the third floor of a big, gray building at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street, silver-haired docent Julie Chelminski recently stepped up to the middle of a hushed room and faced 15 spellbound tourists.

"On the walls of this room there were 9,000 drawers," Chelminski said. "And in those drawers were 10 million cards."

This was in the New York Public Library's catalog room. And these were book people, as happy as pilgrims in the Holy Land, imbibing every detail of how the library switched from cards to computers in 1983. Within minutes, they would stand in a reading room as grand as a cathedral. That same day, they could see Charlotte Brontë's private...

Related "Dorothy Parker" Articles

On the third floor of a big, gray building at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street, silver-haired docent Julie Chelminski recently stepped up to the middle of a hushed room and faced 15 spellbound tourists. "On the walls of this room there were 9,000 drawers,"...